On Mon, 06 Apr 2009 00:40:12 -0600, Khaled Hosny
The attached patch adds Arabic coma, semicolon, full stop (used in Urdu) and question mark to font-ext.lua for protrusion. Now, combined with glyph expansion, I don't get any overfull boxes.
Arabic-script microtypography is one of the cornerstones of the Oriental TeX project. We've been studying this matter for some time now: Because of a) the normal wide spacing around Arabic punctuation, and b) the large size of Arabic punctuation relative to Latin, I'm not sure that protrusion of Arabic-script punctuation is a good idea. It needs a lot of thought, and a lot of testing, before adding it to the system. As for glyph expansion, I don't see how that works at all with the current model, except perhaps with very horizontal fonts. But in that case all that's needed is smart tatweel, not glyph expansion. For hq fonts the current glyph expansion model will mess up the contextual connections. Although one can certainly do things with the current model of protrusion and hz, we need more, much more. Khaled, send me some tests off-list and I'll examine them in light of the overall analysis as we prepare for adding Arabic microtypography support, hopefully pretty soon. Thanks plenty for the contributions, and سلام Idris -- Professor Idris Samawi Hamid, Editor-in-Chief International Journal of Shi`i Studies Department of Philosophy Colorado State University Fort Collins, CO 80523